Vanuatu
Million Dollar Point
Jeeps and bulldozers rust in turquoise shallows where America dumped millions of dollars of war surplus.
Turquoise water laps over the rusting hulks of Jeeps, bulldozers, and forklifts, their outlines softened by decades of coral growth. The machinery stretches from the shallows into the deep, a strange underwater junkyard glittering with fish. Million Dollar Point on Espiritu Santo is where the United States military made one of the most extravagant decisions of the Second World War.
In 1945, as the war ended and the American base on Santo was decommissioned, the US military offered to sell its surplus equipment to the Anglo-French colonial administration. When negotiations collapsed over price, the Americans drove everything — Jeeps, trucks, bulldozers, cranes, cases of Coca-Cola — off the shore into the sea over a single frenzied week. The value of the dumped equipment was estimated at millions of dollars. Today the machinery lies in three to 30 metres of water, clear enough to photograph from the surface. The reef has colonised the metal, turning fenders and axles into artificial coral gardens. No boat is needed — the site is accessible directly from the road, and snorkellers can float over Jeep bonnets in less than two metres of water.
Couple
Snorkelling over wartime Jeeps in crystal water, then eating baguettes and grilled fish in Luganville — it is a combination of absurd history and Pacific calm that stays with you.
Family
Children can snorkel over truck cabs and Coca-Cola bottles in less than two metres of water — it is a living history lesson that requires nothing more than a mask and fins.
Friends
The sheer absurdity of the story matches the visual — military hardware rusting under tropical fish in turquoise shallows. Diving deeper reveals cranes and bulldozers stacked where they rolled to rest in 1945.
- Bulldozers, Jeeps, and Coca-Cola bottles lie in 3 to 30 metres of water — clear enough to photograph from the surface.
- The dump happened in a single frenzied week in 1945 — you can still see the layers of equipment stacked where it rolled off the shore.
- Children can snorkel over Jeep bonnets and truck cabs in less than two metres of water without scuba gear.
- The site is accessible directly from the road — no boat needed — and the surrounding reef has recovered to support healthy coral growth.
Luganville's waterfront stalls sell grilled reef fish wrapped in banana leaf with lap lap on the side.
French-style baguettes stuffed with fresh tuna and island salad from the bakeries along the main street.
Isla Magdalena
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Magellanic penguins in their tens of thousands, nesting so close you walk through their colony.
Buracona
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At midday, sunlight plunges through volcanic rock and ignites an underwater cave into electric blue.
Santa Maria
Cape Verde
Trade winds blast a long golden beach where kitesurfers trace arcs above turquoise Atlantic rollers.
Fajã d'Água
Cape Verde
Hairpin bends drop through bougainvillea clouds to a hidden bay beneath the island of flowers.
Hideaway Island
Vanuatu
Post a waterproof postcard from the world's only underwater post office, then snorkel its coral reef.
Gaua
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A volcanic lake drains into the ocean via a waterfall that plunges through untouched jungle.
Ureparapara
Vanuatu
Sail into the flooded crater of a horseshoe-shaped volcanic island where fewer than 500 people remain.
Millennium Cave
Vanuatu
Scramble through jungle and wade chest-deep rivers to a cave you enter walking and exit floating.